


Father's Day

by Niji_Hitomi_Iscariot



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Dave gets his own against Bro, Family Reunions, Fluff, Gen, Jungles, Past Child Abuse, Post-Canon, Trans Character, all of them - Freeform, all the feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-20
Updated: 2016-06-20
Packaged: 2018-07-16 03:07:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7249588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Niji_Hitomi_Iscariot/pseuds/Niji_Hitomi_Iscariot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Game has been generous enough to give back the guardians it took.</p><p>1. Dave vs Bro - Nobody asked Dave if he wanted his guardian back.<br/>2. Jade and Jake - Does it count if they were dead before the Game?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 1. Dave vs Bro - Nobody asked Dave if he wanted his guardian back.

**Author's Note:**

> I may continue this with the other kids? I dunno. Mostly this was vent-writing.

The recreation of something resembling Houston took a couple of years, and a lot of effort on Jade and Roxy’s parts to both appearify and then resize all the various parts. So that was probably the reason why nobody really noticed the shadow at first.

Twelve days after completion; three years after the end of the Game; Dirk opened the front door to their shared apartment and promptly dropped his glass of OJ.

Now, staring up at an older version of himself wasn’t all that shocking, given what he'd seen and dealt with in the Game. But... It was the fact that he was  _ alive! _

They were mostly of a height, the older version had a few inches on him likely due to having been exposed to actual healthy food growing up rather than cheap snacks and orange sodas of varying quality. And he was wider. He seemed to fill the doorway in a way that the twenty-year-old version just didn’t.

Dirk’s focus had always been speed, so while he could accept that his frame  _ could _ bulk up like that, it hadn’t ever been a priority. Most of that definition had to be for show. There was no way Dave’s Bro could still be as fast as--oh shit!

He flashstepped back around where the older version had gotten past him and deliberately shifted his weight to his left foot, ready to drop his katana out of his specibus if the other tried to pull that bullshit again.

“What do you want?” His voice didn’t carry far, having never particularly liked speaking to strangers--even strangers that were technically, from a biological standpoint, himself.

Dave’s Bro twitched an eyebrow, like he wanted to say something, and dismissed the need for it.

The next flashstep brought with it a clang of steel on steel as Dirk matched him again. He was losing ground, but only because redirecting this asshole would take a lot more physical space than the living room of their apartment, even if they had mirrored it to give them room for both Dirk’s robotics and Dave’s turntables.

“He’s not here right now, and he doesn’t want to see you anyway.” Dirk growled lowly.

Dave’s Bro again seemed to contemplate actually saying something but decided to maintain his stoic silence instead.

Parrying back, Dirk answered him anyway, “You did enough damage, and hurt enough people. Go away. Go back to being dead where you belong.”

A slip and a twist that proved even if his muscles were for show, he still knew how to use them. Dave’s Bro had Dirk up against the wall, his own katana against his neck in an all-too-familiar position. Dirk swallowed, feeling the faint scar around his Adam’s apple scrape over the blade.

The older version’s voice was just as quiet, but carried a sort of distant threat that sent uncomfortable chills down Dirk’s spine. “I dunno who th’fuck you are, or what th’fuck you think you’re doin’ in my apartment, but you better get your head on fuckin’ straight. Or I’ll fix it for ya.”

What happened next, happened so fast, Dirk thought for a second he’d blacked out. Because he blinked and Dave’s Bro was pinned to the wall behind them with a couple of Sollux’s smaller shurikens. The musclehead tugged on it, but only succeeded in tearing his shirt--yet another difference, this douchebag didn’t have the Sweet Bro tattoo Dirk sported.

“Finally learned th’meanin’ of stealth, kid?” He laughed to cover up how angry he was.

Dave appeared out of Time, Caledfwlch in his hand. He didn’t waste time on theatrics, just pulled the bladed stars from the wall with his free hand, and pointed at the door with his blade. “Go. You aren’t welcome here.”

“That anyway to treat your bro, kid? After all I did fer you?”

Dave stepped forward, his jaw set hard, and glared up at Bro’s not inconsiderable height. “I said. Go.”

The douchebag actually spun his katana, anime style, and gave a tilt to his chin to make the light outside glint off of his shades. “Make me, if you can.”

To his credit, Dave did try to make him leave peacefully. Twice. So Dirk really couldn’t blame him when he stored Caledfwlch for his Timetables, and Spun his Bro’s ass around the room. The music that played felt like a classic dubstep layered over with samples of John playing the piano. The bass drop knocked his Bro through the couch into the widescreen, and it shattered his shades. For a few seconds there were multiple Daves, each stepping out of Time to deliver a scratch--his specialty--and cut up his bro’s shirt and hat. Slowly, he worked the fight around to the door again, and when he dropped the beat at the end, he did so with a controlled explosion that blew his bro out into the hallway, his hat smoking and his eyebrows singed off.

“I said leave.” Dave stood over him, once again armed with Caledfwlch.

His Bro coughed a laugh, “You can’t just turn me out. C’mon. I’m your brother. I’m the only one in this shitty town that gave a fuck about whether you had a roof over your head. I’m the only one who gave a fuck about you. I fed you,” he was pushing himself back to his feet, hands slick with blood against the grey wall, “I clothed you. I pulled you from that goddamned crater myself. Who taught you how to fuckin’ survive that fuckin’ game, Cari!”

Caledfwlch flicked the broken frame of his clichéd sunglasses off of his nose, exposing his whole face for Dirk to see around Dave’s shoulder.

“Shut up.”

Dave’s Bro, amazingly, did just that, eyes flicking from the tip of Dave’s sword to his brother’s face and back again.

“You are less than every demon I have conquered in the last seven years, and I am only going to say this once. So pay the fuck attention.” Dave dropped his blade from his Bro’s face to his chest, “My name is Dave Motherfucking Strider. Remember it.”

He almost turned to go back into the apartment, but stopped, alerted by some Time Sense not to turn his back on the man who’d neglected and abused him for most of his childhood. Sure enough when he looked back, his Bro was trying to get back up again, murder on his face. He reached for his specibus, and Dave slapped him across the face with Caledfwlch.

The skin split where the hair-fine edge caught him just under his right eye.

“LEAVE!” Dave’s voice echoed down the stairwell to their left. “BEFORE I DECIDE TO END YOU LIKE I ENDED JACK NOIR!”

Dirk shrank back, a hand unconsciously touching the scar on his neck, so he didn’t see his alternate version scramble away down the stairs, but he heard it. The pounding of old fashioned kicks, uncoordinated in a manner that betrayed the man’s panic. The door slammed, and forced himself to focus on Dave. He could deal with having his decapitation brought up later. Right now he needed to help his brother calm down.

Clearing his throat, he kept his voice soft, “Do… you want me to call Karkat? Or John?”

Inexplicably, Dave began to laugh, leaning against the door, Caledfwlch dangling from his fingertips. He seemed both deeply disturbed and lighter than air at the same time, and Dirk had to suppose it had something to do with finally winning a strife against his Bro. The tears would come later, Dirk knew, but for now…

“Nah.” Dave wiped the blade off with a convenient cleaning rag that had somehow landed on the nearest coat hook during the fight, and stored it away with his other weapons. “I’m good.”

Dirk tilted his head at the door with a small frown, “Strange that he’d show up now after all this time?”

“He’s always been the fuckin’ king of irony.” Shrugging, Dave set about borrowing a few extra selves to put the living room to rights. It only took him about five minutes, except for the widescreen. “Hmph. Gonna have to replace that completely.”

“Equius has spares I’m told. He’s enjoyed learning how to work with liquid crystal and diodes. Apparently they never had such things on Alternia? But, I’m… confused? What does His presence here have to do with irony? Or is that another one of those things that has had a distorted meaning between your timeline and mine?”

“Nah, man. It’s ironic cuz he showed up here today. Of all days.”

Beginning to feel a bit like a clone of Jade rather than Dave, Dirk tilted his head again, this time in a fair imitation of a confused dog. “Today?”

“Oh. Yeah, that must not have been a thing for you given the whole post-apocalyptic batterwitch future and trolls not having actual parents as such.” Dave dug into his sylladex, pulling out a small-ish box. “It ain’t much, and you don’t have to give anything back, but…”

Dirk unwrapped it while Dave rambled on.

“...if anyone’s gonna get shitty completely unironic yet still ironic gifts just for being a person related to me, it’d be you. Cuz of how you’re my bro without all of the douchebag asshole abusive bullshit, and fuck if I know if that’s actually in the original rules of the holiday or whatever, but you deserve it way more than that asshole ever did. So…”

It was a mug. For holding hot drinks and the like. Dirk had seen pictures of these, in fact of  _ this _ particular mug, in the archived, ghost-impressions of interviews with HIS Bro; Dave’s alternate self. He’d usually been dressed in some pale pink, unflattering housecoat type deal with bright slime green rubber shoes with holes all over them, and drinking apple juice out of this mug. And he had no doubt in his mind that it was  _ this _ mug specifically.

“I mean, if you don’t want it that’s cool. I get that. It’s probably too unironic.” Which was Dave-talk for it totally wasn’t cool and he was getting nervous by Dirk’s silence. “Yeah, nevermind, I shouldn’t have bothered with it. It’s just a stupid mug, y’know? Like who even does that anymore? I’ll just take it back and you can--”

“I love it.” Dirk clutched it close. “Thank you.”

“Yeah? Well, I mean, of course, dude! Only the best for my bro, right? And by best, clearly, it’s gotta be the most shittiest thing in all of creation because that’s just how we roll. Totally not buying into the long-dead ideals of oligarchal capitalism. Just bros bein’ bros. No pressure or--urk!”

Dirk cut him off with a completely sincere hug, holding on tight even when Dave tensed up for that half-second as his body tried to reconcile touching with pleasant after the confrontation having dragged up everything from his time living with his Bro--even the gender shit. But eventually he relaxed, and wrapped his arms around Dirk in return.

Which made him smile, “Happy father’s day, bro.”


	2. 2. Jade and Jake - Does it count if they were dead before the Game?

She knew. As soon as Houston 2.0 was finished, as sure as she knew the stars in the sky, and the very atoms of the blades of grass beneath her back. She felt them wake up. Hear their hearts beat for the first time since they stopped. She felt their first breaths, in sync with her own for all of a moment. She closed her eyes and could see the same sky under which she lay from exactly six points of view. Clouds drifting in one, stars twinkling in another. Night and day and dusk and dawn, all at once.

She was everywhere.

She was nowhere.

The biggest trouble with being the goddess of Space was knowing. Not in the same way the seers Knew, but in the spatial awareness seventh sense that previous humans lacked and her friends had in spades. Sometimes literally in spades, considering Tavros and his issue with stairs. 

She almost giggled at that.

But no. The biggest trouble with Space was knowing. Exactly where everything was right down to their atoms at any given moment. She could bamf herself to anywhere she wanted, on planet or not. She could tour the re-shaped used-to-be-Milkyway if she wanted. She could peek in on the core of the planet on a molecular level. She had viruses that she rode like donkeys down the canyons of someone’s skin cells and black holes that wrapped her up in their temporal distortions like the sweetest blanket she’d ever felt!

But on the other side.

She knew where everything  _ wasn’t _ as well.

Over the next twelve days, she didn’t leave her little patch of paradise. Feeling the Striders’ strife, and the Crockberts’ party. She let herself hum along with Moms Lalonde, in tandem, sang suitably ironic songs about not needing men.

And on the thirteenth day, she appearified herself next to her post-scratch grandfather, and sighed to him. “They’re not coming.”

Jake blinked at her, “Holy smokes, make a bit of noise when you just pop in like that! I could’ve been right with my trousers down and then where would we have been!”

“No you wouldn’t.” Her nose wrinkled and she let her tongue slip out between her teeth. “I know exactly where your pants are at all times, Mr. Shucksbuster, so don’t go thinking you can surprise me.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it! And just as a consideration, I don’t think I’m entirely comfortable with you being that aware of my pants!”

“Does it help if I tell you I’m aware of everyone’s pants?! All the pants! All of them!!” Her ears pricked all the way forward with the intensity of her expression, and Jake shuddered.

“Let’s not make references to blue blooded troll girls, please? I’m honestly not sure which one of them’s worse, the one that nearly got herself trapped in the Game for heroism, or the one that went diddling around in my head in that doomed timeline.” He exhaled sharply, going back to polishing the barrel of one of his pistols--disassembled for cleaning of course. “Though I gather meme references and pants were not your reason for popping in today, judging from your first statement.”

Jade felt her ears droop and she swung her feet, brushing the soles of her slippers against the floor in a scuff-scuff, scuff-scuff rhythm that was soothing.

“Come now, Jademate, it surely can’t be as bad as all that.” He set down his pistol to look at her a bit worried.

“I said, they’re not coming.”

“Yes, I heard that part, but what tomfoolery are you talking about? Who’s not coming?”

“Grandma and Grandpa.” Her ears fell all the way back, and she ducked her head.

“Oh.”

Silence stretched between them, the sounds of the jungle outside leaking in through the screen over the windows. Hybrid birds and lizards that hissed and sang strange songs that sounded exactly like their forebears and yet not at the same time. Insects buzzed, and the drip-drip-drip of last night’s rainshower rolling off the roof into the collection bucket made Jade’s ear flick. Heat and humidity weighed down the breeze, but it still brought the salty scent of the ocean drifting past their noses.

And Jake stood all at once, his wooden chair scraping on the planking of the floor. “They still might turn up. You never know. You’re a witch remember? Not a seer. Leave the future to Ms. Lalonde, Ms. Pyrope, and Mr. Vantas the Elder. We’ll just hang on here, in the present and leave all that alone. Perhaps the Game is simply unwriting itself in chronological order, and since--”

“They were dead before the Game. It wasn’t the Game’s fault that they died.”

“It’s not a matter of when they died. If not for the Game they wouldn’t have. Your story about your Grandpa seems to hinge fairly heavily on Mr. Nitram the Younger and his misunderstanding of the situation. And certainly without the Game, the batterwitch could never have brought down dear Grandma! She wouldn’t have even been on Earth at the time!” He put his hands on his hips, looking for all the world like a reborn Peter Pan--and wouldn’t Tavros just lose his shit over that image!--and drew himself up to his not-quite-five-foot-seven-inch height. “Seems to me the one we should be most concerned with bringing back is Poppop!”

Jade did the confused dog thing so far that her lower ear actually flopped over. “What!?”

“Think about it for a moment there, Jade. Nanna was brought back by sprite and enjoys a significantly extended lifespan for it, but Jane’s Poppop was never prototyped. He was and has remained deceased. Tragically cornswoggled by the meteor Jane rode in on.”

“But Poppop wasn’t a guardian.” She frowned, still confused.

“Maybe not to one of us players, but to Jane’s father he was. And it stands to reason that if Dirk’s Bro is somewhere on the planet, all the… what did you call them?”

“Alpha guardians.”

“Right, that. Would be somewhere. Doesn’t it?” He looked so earnest that she could only sigh.

“I don’t think it works like that. I think the Game will only bring back people it killed directly. Through constructs of the Game itself, and even as overpowered as he was Jack Noir was still a Carapacian at the core. The Condesce and Lord English were technically players. So I don’t think their actions can be counted as caused by the Game.”

“Welp…” He licked his lips, looking off to the side, and some of that glow faded a little. “We’ll just have to hang on, dagnabit, and hope for the best. Isn’t that what you lot are always going on about?”

“I guess.”

“Chin up, Jade my girl, we’ve got the grandest adventure of all awaiting us now! What say we go find some of it, eh?” Jake grinned, reassembling his pistols with the kind of ease only long practice could give him. He turned once he had them strapped to his hips over his cargo shorts. “And I’ll get the boys to do another search. Who knows, maybe they’ll find something we’ve overlooked.”

Without much warning, Jade pounced him, hugging him tight.

“Oof! What’d I do this time?”

“You’re just… just… just so you!” She squeezed him, dwarfing him in both muscle mass and height, which meant that when she straightened her back, she hauled him up off the floor.

“WHOAWHAT!?” He flailed a little, clinging to her for dear life.

Instantly Crowbar was through the door, scowling and ready to clobber whatever was attacking his boss, but as soon as he realized what was going on, he rolled his eyes, storing his signature weapon back into his sylladex. He gave Jade a patient look that had he eyebrows to raise, one would have arched towards his hat. With a shake of his head, he stepped back through the door, closing it behind him, and Jade giggled upon hearing him grumbling at the other members of the Felt.

Jake tugged on his shirt to straighten it after she let him go and snorted, a quiet affronted sound. “Whatever the dickens you’re on about, do be careful with such outbursts of affection. The boys get antsy when they don’t see you come in and you know that.”

“Sorry.” But she clearly wasn’t. “C’mon, let’s go find another long-lost lusus for somebody!”

They weren’t out more than half an hour, up to their knees in mud and muck. Jade’s skirt was tied up between her knees, and both of their shirts were off. Though Jake refused to take his binder off. Jade rolled her eyes at that because if she was going to go tit-less, then he could go fully bare!

That argument landed them both in a tangle of vines that slathered something like aloe all over them both.

Jake laughed harder when Jade pulled herself out of the brush, sticker-pods tangled in her hair and ear fur.

At least until she scooped a palmful of the aloe-goop and smeared it over his face!

“Ahh! Jade!! Not fair! You know I can’t see for shit without my spectacles!!” He reached out with both hands for her shirt, eyes closed and stumbled in the wrong direction.

His partner didn’t notice until she caught her breath and by then he was already tripping over the root of some gnarled, paradoxically ancient ginkgo-type tree with fan-like leaves. In the two seconds it took her to remember she had Space powers and could just bamf herself through the plants, she heard him fall into someone with a deep  _ familiar _ voice.

She burst through the undergrowth to the sound of, “There, there, my boy, what’s a chap like you doing all the way out here without your spectacles?”

“I certainly had them, sir, but my, ah, sister seems to have absconded with them.” Jake squinted up at the older man, fully in his shadow and in awe.

“GRANDPA!” Jade squealed, launching herself from where she’d been stunned silent.

“Jade my girl! What the devil are you doing running around shirtless! Most uncouth for a young lady!” But in his smile his prominent gap between his front teeth was bright as the day he’d died.

He scooped her up in his arms, grown as she was, and spun her with a hearty, full laugh. She wrapped herself around him, her fluffy white tail wagging so fast that even if Jake had his glasses on, it would have been a blur. As it was, he just hung back, blinking periodically as though that would make the scene more clear, until a hand tapped him on the shoulder.

“What have I told you about running off without your glasses, boy? You’re blinder than a bat in the sunshine, and that’s a surefire way to get snuck up on.”

He slipped them up his nose and melted under her wise grin. “Grandma.”

She hugged him, not quite as hard as Jade did, but nearly as tight, though they were more of a height than he and his pre-scratch self. He almost found himself distracted with wondering why and how that was, before Grandma smacked him across the back of the head.

“Ow! What in blue blazes was that for?” He rubbed the spot, hurt.

“Stop looking like a kicked barkbeast. You’re thinking too much. Leave that to us old folks, and just be happy we were here to pick your behind up out of the bushes.” She tousled his hair, and pulled him in for another hug.

Then they were glomped by the Harley duo, Grandpa on one side and Jade on the other, squeezing them both as tight as possible.

Jade squeed, “Best father’s day EVER!”


End file.
